Gay Literature

All posts tagged Gay Literature

Hipster-Restaurant Regan & the Queer Book of Horror

Published December 31, 2023 by biggayhorrorfan

As with many physical media collectors, my stacks of films are ever growing and sometimes years will pass before I watch something that I purchased at some dusky garage sale or found for supercheap online. Naturally, my bounty was further enhanced with the unfortunate decline of neighborhood video stores. I, for one, could not resist even the shoddiest looking homegrown horror flick if it was only going to cost me a buck or two. One night, while at my restaurant gig, one of my tables commented on whatever movie related t-shirt I was wearing at the time. We started chatting about films and I discovered one of them had appeared as an extra in one of the low budget terror extravaganzas that I had recently picked up. “I was the girl who pukes at the frat party in Terror at Baxter U,” she informed me, somewhat sheepishly. Photo ops, naturally, ensued.

Due to that encounter, I sped up my timeline for viewing this particular oddity. I found it to have its own set of weird, low budget charms – the most significant being the strange reveal of a May-December romance between an aged professor and one of his male pupils, resulting in a kind of extreme take on the Billy-Stu dynamic from the original Scream. Furthering the story, I was asked, soon after, to be one of a several essayists for an encyclopedia style book about queer characters and themes in horror films. Naturally, Baxter found itself a major place in my writing for that.

Flashforward almost 10 years and that book is finally almost ready for release. Thus, I send a word of thanks out to my very own hipster-restaurant Regan and, wherever she may be, I hope she is proud, in her own way, of the literary conduct that she inspired.

Meanwhile, more information on Queer Horror: A Film Guide is available from the publisher at:

Queer Horror – McFarland (mcfarlandbooks.com)

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Beach Reading with Mark McLaughlin

Published September 5, 2020 by biggayhorrorfan

Considering that the COVID pandemic cancelled any official beach book reading this summer for most citizens of the world, you are hear-by invited to extend that seasonal literary occurrence indefinitely and in whatever setting that you most desire.

A good place to start, literature-wise, might be Human Doll: A Novel by Mark McLaughlin. Described as Myra Breckenridge meets horror novel, this one might appeal to Drag Race fans with its sharply satiric look at drag culture and plastic surgery.

More information on this book and others written by McLaughlin, a Bram Stoker Award winner, is available at https://www.facebook.com/HumanDollANovel/ and https://bmoviemonster.com/.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Book Review: A Warning in Blood

Published January 31, 2014 by biggayhorrorfan

a warning in blood
I trip. I fall. I land someplace new!

Thankfully, others have a more elegant way of arriving at interesting destinations. Take Dru Lorand, the title character in author Joseph R.G. DeMarco’s new vampire detective series A Warning in Blood. Lorand can manifest into traveling mist or transform into an elegant falcon to get around.

And Lorand does get around here. An investigation into an outbreak of uncontrollable vampire children takes him from the lofts and underground lairs of Philadelphia to a mountainous monastery retreat outside of Prague. In his travels, he eventually discovers that an all consuming, age old presence is fighting to take form and destroy the world’s order. And lots of hot men…he discovers those, too, of course!

Granted, like most homosexual fantasy fiction, DeMarco’s male characters are all marked by exquisite beauty. His skills as a writer, though, allow him to nicely differentiate them, as well. Thus we get a nice feel for everyone from the meek and confused (human puppet) Grant to the willfully destructive, mind altering vampire lieutenant Scylax.

DeMarco, also, sets up a nice mythology and his supporting characters, including a helpful gargoyle name Pyro, are inventive and fun. DeMarco doesn’t shy away from exploding body parts or the vicious nature of the creatures that he has created; giving true horror buffs something to latch onto, as well.

The major complaint with this piece just might be that it is an obvious set-up for a series of books and the cliffhanger ending may come too abruptly for some.

A Warning in Blood is published by Lethe Press – http://www.lethepressbooks.com –and is available for purchase at Amazon – http://tinyurl.com/kjcf8x2 – as well!

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Book Review: Out in the Dark

Published December 14, 2013 by biggayhorrorfan

out
The lesbian prostitute nuns who raised me were far more concerned about my love of all things gory as opposed to my sexuality. Well, they were lesbian prostitute nuns. Thankfully, writer-director-sassy bon vivant Sean Abley handles the whole queer horror loving vibe much better with his essential new book Out in the Dark: Interviews with Gay Horror Filmmakers, Actors and Authors.

As the force behind Fangoria’s late, lamented Gay of the Dead, Abley got to pepper us with stories from the most important bent figures in the terror scene. Here, he compiles (and updates) those pieces while adding some new ones into the mix, as well.

Importantly, while Abley interviews the actors involved with gay familiar fare like The Lair, he also spends plenty of time diving, deeply, into the works of such important independent filmmaking voices as Alan Rowe Kelly (The Blood Shed), Bart Mastronardi (Vindication), Jason Paul Collum (October Moon, Screaming in High Heels), JT Seaton (George: A Zombie Intervention) and Armando Nunez (They Have No Shame). Big timers like Dan Mancini (Child’s Play) and Jeffrey Reddick (Final Destination) stop by, as well.

Ryan Metzger in Eulogy for a Vampire.

Ryan Metzger in Eulogy for a Vampire.

Interesting factoids abound everywhere. Former TV heartthrob Wesley Eure (Land of the Lost, The Toolbox Murders) talks about how Hollywood homophobia and the AIDS crisis made significant impacts on his career. VHS enthusiasts may be surprised to discover that Tim Kincaid, the director of Mutant Hunt and other low budget goodies, is actually famed porn maker Joe Gage. Actors like Ryan Metzger and David Moretti, also, reveal that it is not only writers and directors who love terror (on a personal level) – Moretti talks of sneaking looks at Fangoria as a kid while Metzger maintains that a good death scene can seal the deal on a proposed project for him.

Above all, the passion and strength of all these creative individuals shines through, a testament to their own inner drive and Abley’s fun, incisive questions.

Out in the Dark is published by Lethe Press. It can be purchased from their site at http://www.lethepressbooks.com or from Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/mch3dsl.

Until the next time – SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

Follow me at http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan, as well!